


This is Not a Fighting Song

by chaosmanor



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: M/M, Navel-Gazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-25
Updated: 2010-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-14 08:07:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/147156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaosmanor/pseuds/chaosmanor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He fell like a stone into a lake, with the complete surrender of gravity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is Not a Fighting Song

**Author's Note:**

  * For [viggorliforever](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=viggorliforever).



The stillness of the garden fell around Orlando when he stepped through the sliding doors, and out onto the paving. Beneath his bare feet, tiny ferns curled between the paving flags and wrapped around his toes. Overhead, the shade from the alder trees that sheltered the hall kept the sun from prickling his skin.

Behind him, in the hall, the walls hummed with the voices of the people at the art exhibition launch, and bells chimed gently out in the garden somewhere, hanging from a tree branch perhaps, where the wind could tug at them.

"Go," his Nyuudou had told him. "You look like the walls are closing in on you."

That was the problem with people who had insight--they had insight.

The garden at the back of the hall stretched down into the valley, surrounded by vineyards and fields of horses. A stream trickled past one side of the hall, pooling into ponds, spilling over rocks. They'd all planted fruit trees, grandchildren trees the Nyuudou had called them, investments in the future, and Orlando had worked on the rest of the garden, laying out the beds over several months of sustained digging.

Behind him, someone said, "I can leave, if you would prefer…"

Orlando turned around, and found he was smiling as he said, "Stay, at least for a while."

Viggo stepped through the open doors, and out onto the paving flags, jeans dragging over the ferns and jacket hanging open over a dark T-shirt. He looked worn somehow, like his beard had been left in the sun too long, but he smiled back at Orlando.

"The monk told me you'd be out here," Viggo said.

Orlando smiled wider. "Nyuudou," he said. "I had no idea you were up here, in the valley."

Viggo waved a hand back, at the hall. "Friend of mine has some pieces in the exhibition. I didn't know you were involved here."

"This is my work," Orlando said. "Everything else I do is noise, that's all. I work here, and at our No Kill shelter in Oakland as well. This is what's important."

"I didn't know," Viggo said, something like weight in his voice, and Orlando wondered how they'd wound up in that place so soon, and with so little warning. Other people met their exes in courtrooms and coffee shops, on certain days of the year, to write checks and return forgotten paperbacks. He didn't see Viggo for ages, and then they find themselves in the truth in four sentences.

Orlando let the tension drop from his shoulders, and nodded. "And I didn't know how to explain. I can show you now, if you'd like."

Out of the shade of the trees, the sun was warm through his shirt, and the long grass under his feet crinkled and crunched as he walked. He led Viggo past the first set of beds, where the Nyuudou grew their tomatoes and beans on trellises, bees humming quietly.

The further beds were planted with _Salvia_ , standing tall in solid banks of red and blue flowers over pale leaves. He'd under-planted the _Salvia_ species with lavender and nasturtiums, so the garden was a wild tumble of flowers. The valley in the sunshine, and the garden, was so beautiful sometimes that Orlando didn't know how to hold the feelings inside, and could only let them free, out into the world.

"Walk with me?" Orlando asked, and Viggo nodded.

They walked in silence down the path between the first beds, and around a bend in the path, to where the path forked.

"Which way?" Orlando asked, gesturing at the two paths they could choose from.

"I don't know" Viggo said, sounding startled, or something like it. "This is your garden, you know which way to go."

Orlando tipped his head and raised an eyebrow, and Viggo pointed to the left, and said, "Okay, okay. That way."

The path curved around, winding down the slope of the garden until it forked again, offering three directions.

"Are you going to make me choose again?" Viggo asked, and Orlando nodded.

"That's not fair," Viggo said. "You have insider knowledge. What if I lead us into a dead end?"

Orlando laughed, because Viggo looked so affronted and disconcerted suddenly.

"Don't be so suspicious," Orlando said. "You're in a maze at a freaking Buddhist community center. Do you really think the maze is going to have dead ends? Really?"

Viggo smiled, then started laughing, too.

"Point," Viggo said. "So, no dead ends?"

"No," Orlando said. "It's a braid maze, all the paths connect to other paths. There are multiple entrances as well."

Viggo pointed ahead, choosing the path that led across the slope of the garden, and Orlando took his hand and let Viggo lead him.

"Anyway," Orlando said, ducking his head under the branch of a Garry oak tree that he'd curved the path around. "Anyway, if you don't like the way this path is going, you can always turn around and come back."

Viggo stopped suddenly, so Orlando collided with his back, and Orlando said, "Come back," to the silence behind Viggo's shoulder.

The sun was bright on Viggo, so Orlando couldn't read his face, not from his own place in the shade of the oak tree.

"How can you just say that?" Viggo asked.

Orlando thought for a moment of everything he'd dug into the soil of the garden, all the memories and time, and said, "Every moment, of every day, we make choices. Today, right now, I choose this."

Viggo's hands were solid on Orlando's shoulders, his palms rough like river pebbles, and his fingers gripped Orlando's skin through cotton as he pushed Orlando further back into the shade.

"No," Viggo said. "It doesn't work like that. I can't… just come back. What about what happened before? What about that? That has made me who I am. I don't exist in a vacuum."

Viggo's jacket was worn thin in places, when Orlando let his hands rest against it, over Viggo's collar bones, and Orlando could feel the fire burning at Viggo's core, through the fabric. "What you do with that past is your choice," Orlando said.

"That's a pretty rationale," Viggo said, but in the shade, his face was softening, as though things were easier for him to see as well.

"I think you'll find it's more of a philosophy," Orlando said. "You could try it."

Orlando wasn't sure who started the hug, but his own body fell into like a stone into a lake, with the complete surrender of gravity, spreading his hands across Viggo's back and burying his face against Viggo's neck.

With his eyes closed, he could feel the earth turning, spinning around the sun, the sky wheeling above them, and the tree growing. He'd been part of the world, part of the work of the place, for a long time now. He'd forgotten what it was to let his own fire be more than an ember while he'd been learning everything else.

Viggo pulled away, slowly and carefully, just far enough to brush his mouth against Orlando lips and hold there for a long heartbeat.

"Walk with me?" Viggo asked, repeating Orlando's earlier question.

The path twisted around, down stone steps set into the cool dirt, and across the stream, two flat rocks the water lapped over. Orlando held out his hand, from the first rock, the water cold and certain around his ankles. Viggo took his hand, standing in the cold water on the other rock, and the wind shook the trees alongside the stream.

The water from the stream seeped up Orlando's jeans, as they walked through the rest of the maze, down the slope of the hill.

At the bottom, where the path ended in a tangle of long grass and a row of paper birch trees that marked the end of the property, Viggo said, "We can't go back in time, no matter how hard we try."

Orlando took his hand again, and led him around the side of maze, away from the stream, and back up the hill toward the hall.

"Not with our current understanding of time," Orlando said. "That's a fault of our understanding, not of time. Someone will sort that out, someday. Until then, yes, you're right. The best we can do is wait to go around again."

He pointed at the side entrance path to the maze, between two poplar trees.

"It's not a reason for not choosing to act now, though," Orlando added. "Time is not an excuse."

At the top of the maze, where the path from the Nyuudou garden led in, Orlando tugged on Viggo's hand, so he stood still.

"It's not an accident you came here," Orlando said.

"Is it an accident you built a maze for us to walk through?" Viggo asked.

Orlando looked at the garden, rolling down the hill in a wild profusion of life, a growing, thriving proof that his hands could shape something of value, and he laughed.

"That's not the purpose I had in mind for it," Orlando said. "But you are welcome to consider it a gift from me to you."

"Missed you," Viggo said, in a voice low enough that Orlando almost didn't hear it under the sound of the chimes in the garden.

"Enough?" Orlando asked.

Viggo let out a long breath, and nodded. "Yeah, enough."

"Then it's time to stop," Orlando said, and he could feel his smile creasing his face. "Come back inside with me. If I'm going to skip out on helping out with the exhibition tonight, one if us is going to have to explain to a monk why."

"That, um, doesn't sound promising," Viggo said, but he didn't stop Orlando from guiding him back toward the hall.

"You don't know many Buddhist monks then, do you?" Orlando asked. "I can fix that."

END


End file.
